Read Online Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt - Free Book Online Page B

wizened hair-balls. One case, which was arranged with some aesthetic intention, contained a series of nineteenth-century glass ornamental domes—or maybe museum exhibits— in which foetal skeletons were at play with wreaths of dried flowers, wax grapes, skeleton leaves and branches of dead coral. Others contained wax humans divided vertically, fleshed and clothed on the left hand, polished skeleton and skull on the right. Martha lingered over these. She had seen similar things, but never so many, never so strange. Damian pulled open a tall crate from which woodshavings were emerging. Inside was what looked like a white statue of a goddess, a young woman with closed eyes and a curiously flaccid surface, folds of flesh rolling back towards her spine. He realised that she should be lying on her back, and saw that she was swollen to bursting, a full-term gravid woman. Then he bent to read the label, and saw that what he was seeing was the plaster cast made from the body of one Mercy Parker. He remembered that such plaster casts were made for teaching purposes. The deliquescent flesh was the other side of rigor mortis.
    He closed her in again, and went back to Martha Sharpin, who was intent on a collection of small ivory women, some occidental, some oriental, each a few inches long, lying in various postures, curved for sleep, or extended. They all had removable, thimble-sized navel-and-stomach, which could display, and did, the miniature heart, lungs and intestines, or the curled foetus in the womb. Martha asked Damian if they were diagnostic or votive. He said he didn’t know. He said, thinking of the lead nipples which must have poisoned what they were intended to purify, that the whole thing was a collection of attempts to preserve and lengthen life, which nevertheless bore witness to human interventions that had drastically shortened it. He pointed at the early gynaecological forceps.
    “A huge step forward. But spreading puerperal fever wherever they were used. What am I going to do, Dr. Sharpin?”
    “Martha, please. You need someone to make a start on conservation advice and cataloguing. Someone brave, who won’t get bogged down, and won’t be slapdash.”
    “Do you know such a paragon?”
    “No. But I could work on it—say one afternoon a week—myself, and get it into a state where it could be handed over to a proper curator.”
    Damian said he could think of no better solution. Martha said she would be glad if he could provide a dogsbody—someone to lift and dust, and help with labels.
    The image of Daisy Whimple, a little inappropriately, visited Damian’s mind.
    “I know an art student. She did some good decorations in the Gynae Ward, for Christmas.”
    “She’d need to be able to spell. It’s often not their strong point.”
    Damian had no idea whether Daisy could spell. Nor, when he asked in the ward, did any of the nurses know where she lived. Nor when, with unusual persistence for an overworked man, he called the Art College, could they enlighten him, though they promised to speak to her if she came in to classes, which, they said, she mostly didn’t. Later, Damian wondered why he hadn’t asked them for a competent student who could spell.
    Martha Sharpin began her foray at the Collection. She only rarely saw Damian Becket. One day, when they met by pseudo-accident in the lift, she asked if his hours were regular enough for her to take him out to a meal, to talk over a project she had, to put artists in residence into hospitals. She thought he was the doctor who might see the point. Damian liked being asked out to dinner by this handsome sensible woman, who carried her knowledge lightly, and made life more interesting for many people. He found her attractive. He liked looking at women with good clothes,
on
their bodies, so to speak. He saw a lot of female flesh, slippery and sweating, even provocatively pouting and posturing at him. He liked the way Martha’s sweaters moved easily around her